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Commuting Makes Us Unhappy

The New Yorker

This is a long (New Yorker style) but fascinating article about commuting and its effect on our lives and happenings. It is filled with some pretty depressing statistics: The average commute in America is now 51 minutes per day, including to and from work; one in six Americans spend more 45 minutes or more commuting to work and home; the number of commuters who travel 90 minutes or more each way (called “extreme commuters”) has doubled since 1990 and is now 3.5 million.

But one part of the article in particular caught our attention. It sites a recent study that was conducted by the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krieger in which they asked 900 working women in Texas to rate their daily activities according to how much enjoyment they got from each of them. Commuting came in last. Surprising? Probably not.

But what is interesting is what activity was rated as the most enjoyable by these women – sex! Now that’s pretty cool! Amidst all the articles about how exhausted and too tired for sex working women – many of whom are mothers – are, this is refreshing. Perhaps the Texan working gals have found a fountain of sexual energy we should all look for!